Chugging along at the speed of democracy, the XXXI General Assembly of the Organization of American States (OAS) wound up here Tuesday without great fanfare, but with positive strides made toward strengthening the Inter-American human rights system and establishing mechanisms to protect representative democracy throughout the hemisphere.
This was the optimistic general conclusion of the 34 member-state delegations and nongovernmental groups that participated in this week’s summit in the Hotel Herradura, west of San José.
Although the Assembly failed to ratify the Inter-American Democratic Charter and voted against Costa Rica’s proposal to double current levels of funding for the protection of hemispheric human rights, the meeting was hailed as an important first step in opening democratic space in the General Assembly for the participation of nongovernmental rights groups.
In tangible terms, very few conventions were signed, despite the fact that a forest must have been felled to supply the paper for the hundreds of documents and draft resolutions that were constantly being generated and circulated among delegates and the press.
One of the few—and perhaps most important—real achievements to surface from the meeting was the "Resolution of San José"—a 12th-hour agreement which commits member states to fine-tuning and adopting the Inter-American Democratic Charter within 90 days.
Currently in its seventh draft revision, the Democratic Charter is a six-week old Peruvian initiative that calls for diplomatic sanctions against any member state that "interrupts the democratic order." According to the working document, if a country is deemed undemocratic by two-thirds of the General Assembly, it will be suspended from participation in the OAS, but "shall continue to fulfill its obligations to the Organization, in particular, its human-rights obligations."
While several Caribbean countries and nongovernmental groups argued that the current wording of the Charter is ambiguous and ineffective, the document received universal endorsement as a necessary tool to protect and consolidate democracy and human rights throughout the Americas.
Scheduled for ratification by a special session of the General Assembly for the first week of October in Lima, Peru, the Inter-American Democratic Charter will be the first international "constitution" of its kind, according to Roberto Rojas, Costa Rica’s Foreign Minister.
Opening Sunday evening in the cozy confines of San José’s National Theater, the General Assembly brought together delegations from 34 American countries (except Cuba), plus international observers from 20 counties and leaders of various nongovernmental organizations. Notably absent from the summit were U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and Israeli Foreign Minister Simon Peres, both of whom canceled at the last minute because of last week’s suicide bombing in Tel Aviv.
While the two controversial leaders’ no-show threw a wrench into protesters’ plans to hold a massive demonstration outside the Theater (see separate story), inside, delegates, government leaders, members of the press and special guests gathered in excited anticipation.
OAS Secretary General Cesar Gaviria and Costa Rican President Miguel Angel Rodríguez set the tone for the Assembly by addressing the importance of strengthening human rights and fortifying democracy throughout the hemisphere.
Costa Rica’s 65-member Youth Symphony Orchestra serenaded the crowd with a rousing compilation of famous Tico music, which put smiles on faces and had fingers tapping on armrests.
While the evening’s performance ended with an enthusiastic standing ovation from delegates and government leaders, the next morning—during the opening of the first plenary session—it was civil society’s turn to cheer.
In a spirit of participatory democracy unprecedented in the history of the General Assembly, Rojas, who served as this year’s Assembly President, asked Hernán Castro, Costa Rica’s Permanent Ambassador to the OAS, to deliver civil society’s Common Agenda to the Assembly. The agenda, drafted by 67 representatives of Costa Rica-based nongovernmental groups, was presented by civil leaders Monday morning to delegates from eight of the 34 member states, including Costa Rica.
Although the Agenda was read in an unintelligible mumble, the symbolism of civil society’s presence before the General Assembly was hailed by rights workers as a triumph.
"The fact that the Agenda was read is significant and historic in the sense that it has never been done before," Bruce Harris, the outspoken director of the award-winning child advocacy group Casa Alianza, told The Tico Times. "Civil society now has its foot in the door, but we need to continue working to push the whole damn door open."
Perhaps the greatest drama during the four plenary sessions was provided by the Venezuelan delegation, which vehemently argued the semantics of the Inter-American Democratic Charter draft born out of last month’s informal meetings between the governments of Mexico, Costa Rica, the U.S. and Canada.
Claiming that the government of President Hugo Chávez "enthusiastically supports the need to approve a Democratic Charter," Venezuelan Chancellor Luis Alfonso Dávila maintained that the wording of the draft was ambiguous and the document should be expanded to include the concept of "participatory democracy," rather than "representative democracy."
"Representative democracy in parts of the Caribbean and Latin America has resulted in poverty and social inequality," he noted. "It is imperative that the concept of democracy expand to promote social justice in a participatory nature."
Representatives of civil society — while expressing strong support for the concept of the Democratic Charter—also voiced concerns about the current draft.
"The document refers to ‘representative democracy,’ the ‘democratic order’ and the ‘democratic institutional process,’ without defining what these terms mean," Warren Allmand, President of the Canadian-based Rights & Democracy group, told The Tico Times. "Without a concrete definition of democracy, the charter could be applied differently on different days."
According to Allmand and various other non-governmental leaders, another concern is the effectiveness of the Charter’s mechanisms to enforce democracy.
According to Article 13 of the draft charter, only member states or the Secretary General can request immediate convocation of the Permanent Council to make a collective assessment of the democratic situation of a given country. The current wording, rights workers argued, does not allow for average citizen groups to present cases of democratic rights abuse.
To make the document truly democratic, nongovernmental leaders stressed, the final draft should be expanded to provide protective mechanisms to all victims of rights violations, not just governments.
"Often states and governments are the principal violators of democracy and human rights," Allmand charged. "Enforcement of the Charter should not be left just to states."
A third concern raised by civil society was the lack of a provision in the current draft to exclude states deemed undemocratic from economic integration, despite the original understanding that the Charter would have a provision for economic sanctions.
"We do not want a Democratic Charter which is simply a public relations exercise, but in practice is useless as a tool," one rights worker said.
"What we should have done is requested the Permanent Council to draft a legal protocol — something with judicial teeth that we all could fine-tune later," a Chilean delegate who wished to remain nameless told The Tico Times Tuesday. "What we have instead is a form of agreement or statement of principles that is legally unenforceable."
Unable to achieve consensus on the current version of the Charter, Rojas Monday called for creation of a special working group of member state delegations to revise the document’s preamble. By late Tuesday evening, the working group reconvened before the General Assembly to present the new working text, dubbed "the Resolution of San José."
Although not dramatically different from the original draft, the new version acknowledged Venezuela’s considerations in a bracketed paragraph that reaffirms the importance of participatory democracy, and sets a date of Sept. 10 for the Permanent Council to "strengthen and expand" the Charter.
While it is unclear what the revised Charter will look like by next September, or what type of legal or economic provisions it may include, civil society leaders welcomed the announcement, adding that they will fight to have input into the editing process.
Perhaps the biggest disappointment for rights workers this week was the Assembly’s failure to increase funding for the OAS’ human-rights agencies.
Five percent of the OAS’ annual budget is currently earmarked to fund the San José-based Inter-American Human Rights Court and the Washington D.C.-based Inter-American Human Rights Commission. Costa Rica’s proposal, shot down by the General Assembly, called for a budget increase of five percent over the next five years.
"It is a tragedy that the OAS is willing to spend only five percent toward human rights," Harris charged, adding that even a five- percent increase would be insufficient to cover the ever-growing needs to apply justice for the people of the hemisphere.
"If the human-rights budget is not increased in a couple of years," he warned, "the Commission and the Court will collapse due to a complete overload of rights cases."
"We lost a valuable opportunity to get more funding," echoed Claudio Grossman, President of the Inter-American Human Rights Commission. "But this doesn’t mean that our work will end. The Commission will continue as it did before."
Rights leaders applauded Costa Rica for its efforts to lobby for more funding and consult with civil society in the area of human rights.
"We hope other governments in the region will follow the example set this week by Costa Rica," summed up Viviana Krsticevic, Executive Director of the Center for Justice and International Law.
